For more than three years now, I have been working on the project «They are Looking at Us».
Since the year 2017, I completed over 3500 of Portraits (drawings, pen and ink on paper, 42 x 30 cm).
Each portrait of the project «They are Looking at Us» is based on archival photographs of victims of the Holocaust and of Nazi persecution. The portrayed are shown «enface" or in profile. Sometimes faces are fragmented, which enhances the sense of closeness to us. Some of those depicted are known by name. Others are anonymous and their fate is still unknown. I draw people of all ages and of all social backgrounds, but I pay special attention to children.
I try to use the photographic document as an impulse for my imagination to meet a living person and embrace him or her with all the facets of life and loving affection. I look at those persons spellbound and they look back at me. The eyes are the center of the portraits. I pursue their charisma in their facial features.
I use the technik of meticulously detailed drawings and paintings, using ecstatic strokes, very different condensation and empty spaces to achieve rhythms that present the face as an open field of life with a wide range of options and directions. The cutting of the faces and the focus on the eyes stand out on dynamic contact and communication with people.
The eyes are the focus of every image. Their expression is at the heart of the project concept.
This is not about accusation or condemnation, but about the emotional connections that are formed in visual dialogue with the viewer. The humanity of these people in all its complexity, contradictions and vulnerability lives in these portraits and deeply affects those who see them.
Each individual, the eyes of each individual are in the center of the project. The important aim of the project, that the eyes of the portrayed victims of Holocaust will meet the eyes of the next generations and will communicate with them. Through the eyes of the portrayed the spectators should feel the whole spectrum of emotions of these people and all the pain from the fact that we have lost them.
I believe that now is the time it is absolutely imperative to remember those we have lost and to feel the grief of that loss. Today, people want to forget the past. They want a comfortable, carefree existence. Indifference triumphs, and that is what is most terrible. Together with the Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel, I am convinced that help for the future will come from memories alone. Indifference makes exclusion and abuse possible. Inhumanity, hate and lack of compassion arise from ignorance and apathy.
At the moment, a resurgence of nationalism and xenophobia can be felt everywhere. Fear, violence and indifference towards the plight of others, are becoming increasingly common. Therefore the project «They are Looking at Us» is not only an appeal and a reminder. Rather, it wants directly to encourage and to strengthen a feeling of the ability to act of every human being as well as the respect for the dignity of every human being.
Project wants to make contact, it wants to generate empathy, it wants to generate feelings - so that we all recognize ourselves in the eyes, in the faces that look at us. People with longings and fears, with dislikes and sympathies, people full of love.
«It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is a core of what we have to say». This is what Holocaust survivor and author Primo Levi wrote. Holocaust memory should thus be a warning that racism and anti-Semitism can have a significant consequences. It is a responsibility of our generation to carry on the call for «never again».
With this project, I want to talk to people about the Holocaust through feelings. When the eyes of the viewer meet the eyes of these people, words are no longer needed. Seeing these eyes, the viewer should feel the unbearable pain of loss. It is the loss of people who were full of love, light and happiness. If the viewer senses this, thoughts will come through feelings. I am working to ensure that these portraits give people the opportunity to feel, to strongly feel emotion. The project «They are Looking at Us» is built on feeling and I hope that the feelings I experience when these portraits are born, will be experienced by the people who see them.
Since the year 2017, I completed over 3500 of Portraits (drawings, pen and ink on paper, 42 x 30 cm).
Each portrait of the project «They are Looking at Us» is based on archival photographs of victims of the Holocaust and of Nazi persecution. The portrayed are shown «enface" or in profile. Sometimes faces are fragmented, which enhances the sense of closeness to us. Some of those depicted are known by name. Others are anonymous and their fate is still unknown. I draw people of all ages and of all social backgrounds, but I pay special attention to children.
I try to use the photographic document as an impulse for my imagination to meet a living person and embrace him or her with all the facets of life and loving affection. I look at those persons spellbound and they look back at me. The eyes are the center of the portraits. I pursue their charisma in their facial features.
I use the technik of meticulously detailed drawings and paintings, using ecstatic strokes, very different condensation and empty spaces to achieve rhythms that present the face as an open field of life with a wide range of options and directions. The cutting of the faces and the focus on the eyes stand out on dynamic contact and communication with people.
The eyes are the focus of every image. Their expression is at the heart of the project concept.
This is not about accusation or condemnation, but about the emotional connections that are formed in visual dialogue with the viewer. The humanity of these people in all its complexity, contradictions and vulnerability lives in these portraits and deeply affects those who see them.
Each individual, the eyes of each individual are in the center of the project. The important aim of the project, that the eyes of the portrayed victims of Holocaust will meet the eyes of the next generations and will communicate with them. Through the eyes of the portrayed the spectators should feel the whole spectrum of emotions of these people and all the pain from the fact that we have lost them.
I believe that now is the time it is absolutely imperative to remember those we have lost and to feel the grief of that loss. Today, people want to forget the past. They want a comfortable, carefree existence. Indifference triumphs, and that is what is most terrible. Together with the Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel, I am convinced that help for the future will come from memories alone. Indifference makes exclusion and abuse possible. Inhumanity, hate and lack of compassion arise from ignorance and apathy.
At the moment, a resurgence of nationalism and xenophobia can be felt everywhere. Fear, violence and indifference towards the plight of others, are becoming increasingly common. Therefore the project «They are Looking at Us» is not only an appeal and a reminder. Rather, it wants directly to encourage and to strengthen a feeling of the ability to act of every human being as well as the respect for the dignity of every human being.
Project wants to make contact, it wants to generate empathy, it wants to generate feelings - so that we all recognize ourselves in the eyes, in the faces that look at us. People with longings and fears, with dislikes and sympathies, people full of love.
«It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is a core of what we have to say». This is what Holocaust survivor and author Primo Levi wrote. Holocaust memory should thus be a warning that racism and anti-Semitism can have a significant consequences. It is a responsibility of our generation to carry on the call for «never again».
With this project, I want to talk to people about the Holocaust through feelings. When the eyes of the viewer meet the eyes of these people, words are no longer needed. Seeing these eyes, the viewer should feel the unbearable pain of loss. It is the loss of people who were full of love, light and happiness. If the viewer senses this, thoughts will come through feelings. I am working to ensure that these portraits give people the opportunity to feel, to strongly feel emotion. The project «They are Looking at Us» is built on feeling and I hope that the feelings I experience when these portraits are born, will be experienced by the people who see them.
Projeсt
«They are Looking at Us»
